Who pays for Poland's Patriots - that's the question

Poland and the United States are at odds over who should pay possibly billions of dollars for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin air defences as part of a missile-shield agreement between the two countries, a prominent U.S. missile-defence advocate said on Friday.

Washington is willing to put Poland at the head of the line for the Patriot air and missile defence system and to provide training worth millions of dollars, but it wants Warsaw to pay for the hardware itself, said Riki Ellison, head of the private Missile defence Advocacy Alliance.

Poland, on the other hand, "wants the U.S. to foot the bill for the entire thing," Ellison said in a telephone interview after Poland spurned the latest U.S. offer.

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